23
Oct 2002: Editor's note: It appears that Motorola has taken down
the PDF document which contains some of the info spoken about in
this report. We have our own copy which we can post if we decide
to go that way.

It
should be stated that on MacNN's
coverage of this story, many posters seem very angry at Moto
and even more at Apple for not delivering faster machines in a more
timely manner. One must remember that Apple is the sole body responsible
for the R&D on their hardware designs, including processor items
and architectures. Unlike Intel and AMD, locked in a holy war over
clock speed, Moto and IBM are beating to a different drum with their
semiconductor business. A question is, will Apple be able to sustain
relevance in performance if this drum beat doesn't change? The answer
may not be so obvious. The inventions of the future are unknown
and the quality of innovation at Apple can never be underestimated.
We have added some additional closing remarks in green at the end
of page two. -- AFR, Ed.

Details on
Motorola G5 Processor Emerge

As we have mentioned in the past, Architosh has been sitting on
details of the Motorola G5 processor development, its history and
its circumstances for awhile now. Recently with the introduction
of the IBM
PowerPC 970 (a 64-bit Book-E compliant microprocessor) we were
made aware of a PowerPC Motorola document that contains the model
numbers for upcoming chips which Apple could use in their computers.
The new road map document clearly shows shipping chips versus upcoming
and proposed chips.

What's In A Number?

A number of folks who have written in have talked about Motorola
PowerPC chips with the following model numbers: MPC75xx, MPC755x,
MPC76xx, etc. These numbers would logically follow current Moto
processors with the following numbers and MHz range:

Moto
Chip

MHz
Range

MPC7451
(0.18micron)

600-667MHz

MPC7441
(ditto)

ditto

MPC7455
(0.18micron)

600-1000Mhz

MPC7445
(ditto)

ditto

However, it appears that the projected (or anticipated) model numbers
above are partially wrong. A MPC76xx
chip is not located on this road map document. Instead, the highest
planned Moto G4/G5 chip that appears is the MPC7457-RM.
That chip is proposed for a 2004 time frame.

The Next Moto Chip - A G4 Again?

It appears from this road map that the next Motorola "G-something"
processor will be a G4, its model number being MPC7457, with a MHz
range between 867-1833MHz. This chip is based on a SOI (silicon
on insulator), .13micron process and appears planned for sometime
in 2003. The MPC7457-RM chip, planned for 2004 is more mysterious
and includes RapidIO. This may be the almost mythical Moto G5 chip,
code named Eleven. From the road map drawing the MPC7457-RM appears
to not have a L3 cache but instead utilizes a RapidIO interconnect
to high-speed DDR SDRAM. That would be consistent with the planned
Moto G5 chip.

So what is the 1.25Ghz G4 currently in use? After looking at Motorola's
site, it appears that that chip is just an overclocked version of
the MPC7455. As we asked at the end of this
story on IBM's 64-bit PowerPC chip and the evidence of Linux
AltiVec support, 'will Motorola have an answer to Apple's processor
woes in addition to IBM's answer....and if so when?'

The answer to that appears to be in 2004 at the earliest, at least
according to this Moto
PDF document. The next processor Apple will likely use will
be the Motorola MPC7457 and because it moves to a .13micron process
architecturally the chip could see 1.8Hz at the top end. Because
Moto never showed documents of the 7455 going up to 1.25Ghz, we
believe that the 7457 was originally the chip meant to take Apple
over the 1 gigahertz barrier and beyond after the progress on the
true G5 chip code named Eleven and Steamroller stalled.

According to information sent to us, the next chip after the 7455
line (Vger Apollo, our current Apple G4 chip) was code named "Steamroller"
and was a true G5 chip. However, this was not the G5 chip code named
Eleven which we were told was abandoned even though Moto had working
units in Apple test boxes. These were the very same test boxes which
Architosh reported in late 2001 had processors running up to 2.4GHz
and were scary fast.